empiricism

Empiricism is a theory which holds that the origin of all knowledge is sense experience.
The term also refers to the method of observation and experiment used in the
natural sciences. Often, empiricism is contrasted with rationalism, a theory which
holds that the mind may apprehend some truths directly, without requiring the medium of
the senses.

Empiricists tend to emphasize the tentative and probabilistic nature of knowledge,
while rationalists tend to be dogmatic and assert they have found a method to discover
absolutely certain knowledge. Empiricists see philosophical
skepticism as limiting what the human mind can hope to accomplish and
as a guide to those areas of inquiry we can usefully apply our talents
towards. Rationalists see skepticism as something which must be refuted on
every count in order to establish a sure footing for absolutely certain
knowledge.

There is great irony here since historically it was the rationalists
(Plato, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz) who had the vision of a knowable
universe, of laws governing all the parts of the whole, of a unified
whole, of minds made for knowing this universe, which is essentially
today's vision of science. On the other hand, the empiricists' (Locke,
Berkeley, Hume) vision of subjective perceptions limiting knowledge, of
the need for faith to believe anything beyond immediate perceptions, of
minds incapable of knowing much of anything, of dire skepticism, is the
vision of anti-science.